Best of the fests

When Thierry Fremaux, the new director of the Cannes film festival, came to London recently to firm up the British representation at the festival this year, he cut a very different figure from his predecessor, the patrician Gilles Jacob. Invited to a dinner by the British Council, he arrived informally dressed, divested himself of a backpack and cheerfully spoke English to all and sundry.

If Jacob is still the eminence grise behind the festival, Fremaux is undoubtedly giving the event a new look. Some say Cannes needs it, as its days of attracting a whole posse of American stars and their attendants may well be over for good. There are American films in the competition, and stars from over the water will be in evidence, but there is a limit to what you can do for Hollywood if most of its films can't pass muster with an international jury, which this year is headed by David Lynch, who is hardly a Hollywood favourite.

Added to that is the fact that few film-makers want to premiere at Cannes with a commercial picture and then open in Paris in the middle of the summer, when a large slice of the potential audience has left the city. From the Berlin international film festival, you can release in Germany at the end of February; and at the Venice film festival, you release in Italy in the autumn.

That is essentially why showbiz reporters pronounced Cannes a disappointment last year, even though most critics thought the competition section formidable. They were there for the stars, not the films, and how many cast-iron stars have Europe, Asia and the rest of the world got?

Buyers, too, seemed disappointed, and could be again this year, since the competition films of 2001 were mostly art movies, and thus only saleable to minority audiences. Neither the Palme d'Or winner, Nanni Moretti's The Son's Room, nor the runner-up, Michael Haneke's The Piano Teacher, could possibly have expected more than a selective release outside their countries of origin.

Why, then, is Cannes still considered the most important film festival in the world? It has something to do with the distinction of its past, built upon by Jacob with an iron determination to let glamour support art, and vice versa, but as much with the fact that almost every film-maker in the world still wants his or her latest offering in competition. The compensations, too, are still great if they can manage a success in any of the three other sections reserved for new films: Un Certain Regard, the Directors' Fortnight and the Critics' Week. The Indian director Mira Nair created a huge stir when her Salaam Bombay! appeared in the Directors' Fortnight in 1988, and Gaspard Noe, a much more "difficult" French director, whose Seul Contre Tous was lauded with the Critics' Week prize in 1998, now finds himself installed in the competition with his latest film.

This is one of the great strengths of Cannes. It allows its younger, or newer, directors the chance to progress up the ladder. Some fail, but others make their reputations - at least with the hundreds of film critics who stagger, bleary-eyed, into the brutally early 8.30am screenings.

Cannes remains the most formidable film festival because it is faithful to its talent, and the world's press keep coming to see the result. The sales people moan that there is nothing commercial to buy, and the showbiz reporters can't find much to write home about, but there is no other festival with quite the same cachet.

Neither Berlin's Golden Bear, nor Venice's Golden Lion can match Cannes' Palme d'Or. Nor can the competitions at Rotterdam in January, Locarno in August, Karlovy Vary in July, Locarno in August, and San Sebastian in September persuade many film-makers to reserve their new films for them if Cannes beckons.

Cannes is for film-makers who want prizes, but there is another type of festival: the non-competitive variety, often based on London's "festival of festivals". These events are becoming increasingly important because they are able to mount as many films as they like that have been have premiered elsewhere. The most prestigious is Toronto, which attracts almost as many American critics as Cannes. Films that gain good reviews in Toronto can get access to what is still the largest market in the world. The success of this festival in recent years - even though last year it was effectively wrecked by the events of September 11 - probably makes it the second most important film jamboree after Cannes.

Are film festivals, of which there are now several hundred all over the world, most of them attracting very large audiences, of much real use? That is the question even Cannes will have to answer one day. But while they remain the only effective international platform for nine-tenths of the world's film-makers, the festivals won't have to answer it just yet.